Re: xinerama portrait

["John M. Gabriele" <jandl bestweb net>]

>
>Andrew, how's the image quality on your two LCDs?  I'm driving two Dell
>E171FP panels from a single Radeon 7500 card.  The monitors are analog
>and I've got a DVI->VGA adaptor on one of the ports.
>
>I ask because -- despite the current brokenness of always-on clone mode
>-- the image quality has always been poor, even under XF 4.2.  In a
>nutshell, the DVI->VGA panel is fuzzy and the VGA panel has tons of
>ghost lines and other image instabilities.  Not to mention positioning
>problems on both heads.
>
>I know this is not a panel h/w problem because I can drive the same
>monitors from a Radeon 8500 Mac card on my OSX box and they look
>wonderful.  I'm still suspecting the Radeon driver under XFree86.

Barry,

I've noticed a difference in display quality when driving my flat
panel with an nVidia gForce2 MX 200 vs. a Matrox G400. The flat
panel has both DVI and analog (15-pin) inputs, but so far I've only
had video cards with analog outputs. :( Anyhow, the Matrox looks
better -- more crisp with less shadowing.

Note, this was with my 15" 1024x768 monitor. I've looked at 17" 1280x1024
flat panels and my guess is that you'd have trouble getting *any* analog
card to give you crystal clear output. 

>On a tangent: the various problems I'm having with the Radeon h/w under
>XFree86 are making my Linux desktop experience too depressing.  Can
>anyone recommend a good dual-head card that is well supported by XFree86
>4.3, that can drive two VGA flat panels, and that costs no more than
>about $150?  I don't care about gaming, i just need a good s/w
>development platform (i.e. look real nice for text).

That's a very good question. Add to it: a card that has DVI output(s).

Any recommendations?